


turn the oscillator

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, M/M, Phone Sex, yes a little infidelity between friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:41:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28716693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Eddie does that breathy laugh into the phone again. “I believe it. I, I’d believe almost anything right now. I didn’t think I’d… Well. I didn’t expect this.”Who would? Not Richie, not in all the terrified miles between LA and Derry. He’s not sure what he would’ve done if he’d known, whether he’d have run at it or if he would’ve drawn back, cowardly.In either case, he’s here now. Here in Maine, in a dusty suite, listening to the sound of Eddie Kaspbrak breathing.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 19
Kudos: 179
Collections: Clowntown Kink Meme 2021





	turn the oscillator

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [clowntown2021](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/clowntown2021) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> After Derry the Losers go back to the townhouse to finally get some sleep. Richie + Eddie back to their separate rooms - they're both kind of aware of something between them, and that it's mutual, but they've not discussed anything and neither of them has acted on it yet, 
> 
> They try to sleep off the stress of the last couple of days, but neither of them can. They're not quite there yet when it comes to sleeping in the same room, - Eddie's still technically married, Richie's working through a lifetime of being closeted - so they end up on the phone to each other instead for comfort.
> 
> One thing leads to another and they end up having phone sex.  
> Happy, hopeful, this is the start of something good kind of vibes.

Once it’s all over, Richie and five of the best friends he’s ever had stumble back to the townhouse through the white-gold morning, weaving on the road like a pack of wayward, drunken orphans. Someone suggests the quarry, but Eddie shuts that down quick, gesturing incredulously at his cheek until they all laugh and agree, yeah, stupid idea. 

Richie can’t seem to walk in a straight line. He keeps bumping into Eddie, knocking shoulders. After so many close calls, every brush of contact, of Eddie, clammy and grimy but _alive,_ threatens to set off his crybaby impulse. That would’ve been too fucking cruel, to give Richie this and take it away just as quickly. There had been a moment, somewhere between alien pincers coming down and Eddie knocking Richie sideways with all his compact bodyweight, when Richie had looked up helplessly in the face of his own death and thought, well, at least he had said something. Being a sloppy drunk had never much helped him before, but at least he’d die with Eddie knowing. 

Of course, he’d expected to die of the embarrassment, first. Richie woke up after the night of their homecoming with a pounding headache that did nothing to dim the razor-sharp memory of cornering Eddie in the hallway leading to the Jade of the Orient’s bathroom, and asking, insistent, _Do you remember me. No, but, like. Do you remember._ And then the crazier thing, Eddie looking at him hard and serious and saying _yes. _Yes,__ and then the words Richie had heard before, but never like this, spat out with so much bitter regret: _I’m married._

Whatever Richie was supposed to say to that, he’s pretty confident he’d said something else. He knows what he wants to say now, though. He wants to look up at the sky and say to God or the turtle or whoever the fuck it is, _thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you._

Realistically, the people he should be thanking are the ones right around him, so Richie focuses there. He runs into Eddie for the millionth time in the past ten minutes, only kind of on purpose, and says, “Déjà vu, dude.”

Eddie nods slowly, squinting at Richie, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I mean, last time I staggered home like this I was drinking cactus juice with an Olsen twin, but otherwise it’s like, almost the same.”

Their friends cackle behind them, easiest audience in the world right now, and Eddie tells him he’s fucking stupid and shoves him weakly, grinning. Richie grabs the good side of Eddie’s face and gives him a noogie, then drops his arm on his shoulder and leaves it there. 

In the doorway to the townhouse Richie dares to say something completely inoffensive about being excited to pass out, and Bev comes back straight away like she’s planned it, “California king seeks same,” and every single one of them hoots like screech owls, or like people who still have approximately twenty-seven years worth of pent-up anxiety to expel. Even Eddie coughs with laughter as if it’s actually funny, and by the looks of him, he’s found plenty of time over the years to channel pent-up anxiety into like, corporate 5ks.

They get into the townhouse’s common space with just a bit of clatter, and there’s no one there but them anyway, so who cares. Bill moves around the room switching on the scattered stained glass lamps, lighting up the overstuffed couches and weathered accent tables and the dark, empty fireplace. Richie, who likes to think he knows where he belongs, goes straight down to the carpet, groaning. 

Somewhere above him, someone's alarm goes off on their phone.

“It’s 6:15 _,”_ Bill says apologetically. They all dissolve into hysteria again, Richie too this time, lying flat and shaking on the floor until it feels like he’s gonna puke. Someone fwumps down on the floor next to him while his eyes are shut with laughter. Richie thinks, _there he is._

He opens his eyes. Eddie, like all of them, looks and smells disgusting. His hair dried out on the wobbly victory march home, but his pants are dripping onto the carpet, jaw and neck all smeared with something that doesn’t bear considering. He must be losing it, Richie thinks, and feels a pang of bottomless gratitude that makes very little sense. 

Eddie looks down at Richie and smiles. 

“Feels like we should have a feast,” Ben suggests from the couch where he’s sprawling, Bev’s legs kicked over his lap. “Champagne and mutton.”

“That actually sounds fucking vile,” Eddie says, and everyone giggles at that, too. What’s wrong with them? Can’t stop. If Richie still has a career after this, he’s gonna make sure a few near death experiences are planted in every tough audience. 

“Feels like,” says Mike, the only one still standing, “we should take a round of showers before anyone sits on furniture we don’t own.”

“Dude, this town owes us,” Richie says, looking at Eddie, the dirty bandage peeling away from his cheek. 

“Not that much,” Mike says. “Come here.”

He gets them all in a circle, doing one of those awkward movie moment group hugs with their arms around each other’s backs. Eddie and Bev are both still shaking with silent laughter, Eddie’s mouth pressed into a firm line to keep it contained.

“We smell like a porta potty,” Richie says, and Eddie’s laughter bursts out of him, breaking the rest of them again, making Richie grin. 

“Showers,” Bill says agreeably. “Showers and sleep.”

“I love you guys,” Mike says. "I really, really love you." 

“Duh,” Bev says sleepily, breaking away and cocking an invisible gun. “We’re awesome.”

Bev, Ben, and Richie’s suites are on the second floor. Bill and Eddie are on the first. Whatever’s happening between Bev and Ben, they’re in no state to hide it—halfway up the stairs they’ve got each other by the hand, leaning their weight into one another. Richie hangs back at the bottom of the staircase so he doesn’t have to watch them pick a room. 

“Hey.” 

A gentle grip on Richie’s sleeve. There he is. Richie turns to Eddie at the foot of the stairs.

Eddie’s looking up at Richie with his chin tucked down, mouth soft, eyes dark and unblinking. None of them look good right now, all bloodless and sodden, but Eddie’s working it. A Gothic hero in another life. One whose growth was stunted due to consumption, maybe. 

“My scalp is itching,” Eddie says. “I really gotta shower.” 

Unthinking, Richie leans into Eddie’s hand. “No shit.”

“Hopefully after the shower, there won’t be.”

“Edward Kaspbrak,” Richie says, and he feels warm, fuzzy. “Didn’t think you were that disgusting.”

“You don’t know me,” Eddie says, but the look on his face says different, wide open, his eyes roving over Richie’s filthy face. “But after.” He leans forward on his heels, squeezes Richie’s arm. “Wanna take me to urgent care?”

They look at each other and start laughing again. This, Richie thinks, is nuts. This is certifiably bonkers. “Yeah,” he says. “Guess that’s probably a good idea.” 

Eddie is in the shower for almost an hour. Richie’s phone, dead in his pocket, charges up to 15%, but then dies as soon as he unplugs it. Going for an extended sewer bath will do that, Richie guesses. He takes his own shower, scribbles directions to urgent care on the palm of his hand, and meets Eddie in clean clothes back downstairs. 

Eddie makes a little sound in his throat when they get to Richie's car, like he's embarrassed for him, but when he slides into the passenger seat and pulls his seatbelt over himself he's smiling.

"How's it feelin’, doc?" Richie asks. 

"I’m not sure." Eddie puts his hand up to the bandage, still visibly dirty after his shower, and pokes it gingerly.

Richie turns on the ignition. “Shoving your finger in it will probably help.”

Eddie chuckles. Dips his head and rubs a hand over his face. “God,” he says as Richie turns onto the paved road. “I can’t stop laughing.” He laughs again to prove it. “I am really fucking sad. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Where to start,” Richie says, pure reflex. “Me too. Maybe you should go into comedy.”

Eddie cracks up harder into his hands. Richie watches him out of the corner of his eye and laughs too. It beats crying, or throwing up out the window. A good jack off session and then a long sleep, that’s what they need. 

“When’s the last time you pulled an all-nighter? College?”

Eddie snorts and turns his body toward Richie. “Like, Monday.”

“Seriously?”

“I do it all the time, dude. Not, fucking, cactus juice, just, uh.” He waves a hand over his heart. “Bad sleeper.”

“You could be professor sleep hygiene _so_ easy.”

“I’ve been thinking, actually.” He slips into intensity so quickly, from unserious to serious and back again, and Richie is thrilled, thrilled like he found a crumpled twenty in a long forgotten pocket, because he can still read Eddie’s ebbs and flows. Still ride the wave. “Sometimes I sleep on the bed Myra’s parents got us," Eddie says. "But sometimes I sleep on the pull-out, too. Maybe like, fifty-fifty.” He hesitates. “Seventy-thirty. And it’s not a very comfortable pull-out.”

Richie takes his eyes off the road long enough to look at Eddie. “Pulling out rarely is.”

Eddie doesn’t even groan at him. He just watches Richie, hard enough that Richie can feel it, and goes on. “So, I’m thinking this is not working. Actually thinking I’m not gonna go back.”

There’s a lump working it’s way down Richie’s throat. He wants to laugh it out, but it’s sitting heavy in there, and when he opens his mouth it comes out as a dry little cough. 

“I, I’d have to go back to New York,” Eddie says. “And be an adult. It might be really shitty for a while. I know a guy at work who, uh, did this, and it took him two years.”

“That’s a long time,” Richie gets out around the lump.

“I know,” Eddie says. “But he has kids. I don’t think I’d…. It could be really fast. It’s just good to prepare for the worst. If it’s contested.”

Richie suddenly realizes he must be very, very tired. He’s got that floating-outside-your-body feeling that comes with different forms of intoxication.

“Does that sound crazy?” Eddie asks.

They shouldn’t be doing this while driving. Richie looks at Eddie and back at the road. He swallows carefully. Drops one hand off the steering wheel and gives Eddie’s knee a firm, quick squeeze. “I’m probably not the person to ask. But no. I don’t think it does.” 

Eddie picks up Richie’s hand and holds onto it the rest of the ride. He’s married, and Richie has spent the last twenty years building an empire on wry self-hatred that’s supposed to reach every extension of himself, every thing he loves. That’s a whopper to untangle. Richie's heart sits between their palms, hot and hammering to feel Eddie’s skin. 

Amazingly enough, it turns out Eddie got through the whole Neibolt ordeal without busting a single stitch. That doesn’t stop the doctor from looking like she might kill them, though, for arriving in the waiting room not twenty-four hours after she first fixed the gauze in place with it soaked through and smelling of shit, which, no, they cannot explain. Eddie lies sideways on the bench while she flushes the wound, facing Richie. He is under strict orders not to twitch, so they’re both trying to stay blank, but Eddie keeps giving Richie this look, his chin low, eyes blinking slowly. Richie can hardly stand to look at him, can’t look anywhere else. The doctor swabs the wound, coats it in petroleum jelly, replaces the bandage, prescribes Eddie an extra course of antibiotics, gives him two ibuprofen, and stares them out the door. 

Eddie falls asleep on the drive back, mouth open, head lolling gently on his shoulder. Richie’s feeling pretty sleep-stupid too. He almost can’t believe Eddie let him drive them anywhere. Exceptions can be made for medical care, he guesses. Or maybe the adrenaline of the night just tricked Eddie’s brain into releasing some really unjustified oxytocin in Richie’s direction. Richie leans forward on the steering wheel and sends up a prayer for that one. 

He nudges Eddie awake back at the townhouse. “Time to mop your drool off the leather, buddy.” 

Eddie comes to blearily, rubbing his eyes, squinting around. He lets Richie lead him inside, but it’s clear they both need to go collapse. Richie shrugs him off gently at the staircase.

“Go sleep it off, spaghetti man.”

“Hold on.” Eddie yawns, steadying himself with a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “Don’t sleep all day, it’ll fuck up your circadian rhythm.”

“I’d sooner die.”

Eddie blinks at him and smiles. That look again. He makes his hand into a fist and pushes it gently into Richie’s chest. “I’ll talk to you later. Right?” 

Richie should be able to come up with something to say to that. Kinda anticlimactic, Eds. Here’s my card. My people will call your people. Eddie’s fist is firm against him, letting Richie lean into it. “Yeah,” Richie says. 

Eddie nods formally at him, and turns away, and shuffles sleepily down the hall. Richie gulps for air, and laughs nervously, alone on the stairs. 

Then he goes upstairs, keels over on top of the fussy old quilt, and snores through the next six hours. 

Mid-afternoon he comes groggily back down the stairs. The common space is empty, but sounds of revelry are coming down the hall. Richie follows it to Bill’s suite, where he finds the beginnings of the feast that Ben had wanted hours ago—take-out containers strewn around, offering samplings from all over Derry’s sad selection of restaurants, minus Chinese. Disc-like pizza, nachos with unmelted cheese, limp chicken tenders, the oily works. 

Everyone is there, even Mike, who had gone back to his own place to shower. Eddie is sitting on the loveseat with one of Bill’s books in his lap, using it as a makeshift table to carefully balance a container of cloudy miso soup. Bev is sitting next to him, but when she sees Richie she kisses Eddie on the cheek and goes to wrap her arms around Ben.

“Thought you’d kick down my door if I slept past noon,” Richie says. 

Eddie grins at him. “Then how would you learn.” 

They pile into two cars and head back to Mike’s place. It’s easy to waste the rest of the day there, lounging around his little kitchen, drinking beers and a dusty bottle of Henry Mckenna that Mike digs out from the back of the cupboard. Bill gets into Mike’s papers and almost leads them all in ceremonially burning his stack on Derry history, but Mike draws the line there, leaping up amid Richie’s encouraging whoops to gather the sheaths of paper hastily to his chest and say something about the vital importance of preserving history. 

Eddie sits next to Richie on the couch. When he gets up to grab another beer, he snatches up Richie’s empty can as well, tossing it in the recycling bin Mike keeps under the sink. Glances at Richie from the sink; again from the fridge fishing out two beers; and again from the table while he borrows the bottle opener on Ben’s keychain. 

Jesus, Richie thinks. He soaks in Eddie’s square hand, his fingers wrapped around the necks of their two beer bottles. Who knows. Maybe this shit really does just happen. People meet, don't they? People meet perfect strangers, in bars or on the subway, with nothing holding them together at all, and sometimes they wind up spending the rest of their lives together. Richie's parents met in school, nothing obviously in common except a desire to get the world to floss. And what's crazier, really—that, or this? Eddie isn't even a stranger.

When the light is slanting deep purple through Mike’s shutters, they go back to the townhouse with the idea of getting back into a normal sleep cycle. Eddie drives himself and Richie and Ben and Bev back in Richie’s car. Bev and Ben are both yawning, which makes Richie wonder, loudly, if they hadn’t managed to get any sleep that morning. Bev reaches up to the passenger seat and smacks him. Richie grins out the window. 

Richie always thought he knew something about wanting, but now he’s not so sure. This is so different—not the generalized sense of missing out on something, not even the weird lonesome pang that comes with convincing himself that the thing he’s missing is something he doesn’t really need. This time, the feeling is localized.

Localized around the hand that’s gripping the steering wheel on Richie’s rental, specifically. Localized around the arm that brushes him on their way back into the townhouse. The voice that says, “Good luck getting any REM sleep, dummy.” The eyes that follow him up the stairs, soft and burning. Richie is used to being looked at, has made a whole career out of it. Not like this, though. He goes up to bed with a strange heat low in his stomach. 

Richie is determined to prove Eddie wrong about REM and Acadian rhythm or whatever, so he brushes his teeth in his en suite bathroom, strips down to his boxers, and crawls into the big soft beautiful bed that he does not deserve. For every way that Derry sucks, it’s pretty perfect in the summer. With the window open a crack, the cool summer air blows gently through the room, feeling so good that Richie doesn’t bother getting under the covers. He closes his eyes, breathes slowly, and starts his normal trick, counting backwards from one thousand. 

At eight hundred ninety-eight, Richie opens his eyes.

Okay, so. Maybe Eddie had a point. He’s coming off of the most adrenaline-fueled twenty-four hours of his life, and he was sound asleep not six hours ago. If he was Ben or Mike, maybe he’d get up and burn off some energy with a couple hundred pushups. Richie snorts, and then, because he is neither Ben nor Mike, reaches for his phone.

It’s still dying as soon as it’s unplugged, so Richie worms over to the side of the bed to stay within range of the charger. It’s not yet midnight. He holds the screen close to his face, not bothering to grab his glasses, and thumbs through Twitter. 

Everyone is making fun of some guy who wrote a long thread about his wife’s incredible resilience and beauty after she toppled headfirst into the New England Aquarium’s penguin enclosure. Richie reads half the thread, tension headache behind his eyes, before a text notification from an unsaved number pops up on the top of his screen. 

_How’s the REM going_

Richie grins, stomach lurching. He turns onto his side. 

_i told you not to text this number mrs k!!_

_Don’t be disgusting_

_you like it_

_What would you do if this was Ben_

_it’s not?_

_You wish_

_What are you doing_

Richie sends him a screenshot. 

_You should tell your followers about how resilient we were after falling into a clown enclosure_

_seems like i should get to doesn’t it_

_It’s not fair if only Bill monetarily benefits from this_

_believe me i will find a way_

There’s a thirty second pause after that. Richie reads back, brushing Eddie’s texts with the pad of his thumb. 

_Do you remember those walkie talkies_

_Yellow_

_You almost got me kicked out of summer camp for that_

Richie does remember, all of a sudden. Twelve years old, dried marshmallow fluff sticking his elbow to the scratchy sheets, blanket pulled over his head as he did his version of whispering, _Jamie H. barks in his sleep, over._

 _their fault for putting us in different cabins_ he types.

Another pause after that. And then Richie’s phone buzzes in his hand.

A shocky twist of excitement runs through Richie’s stomach. He scoots higher on the bed, giving his phone charger a little more slack, and answers the phone.

“Richard Tozier speaking,” he says brightly.

“Don’t you sound wide awake.” Eddie’s voice is dry and judgmental and Richie could eat it with a spoon.

“I was waiting up for an important phone call.” 

“Oh, you need to hang up?”

“I’ll put it on call waiting.” 

Eddie exhales, which Richie interprets as a laugh. “I got up to brush my teeth a while ago and I could hear Bill snoring from the bathroom. It was like he was in the bathtub.”

“Maybe he was,” Richie suggests. “Did you check?”

“Dude, I’m gonna be checking behind shower curtains for violent freaks the rest of my life.” 

“Smart man. How’s the face?”

“You know what? It sucks!”

Richie laughs. “Oh no!”

“I really got myself thinking I had a high pain tolerance, but I guess that was just adrenaline.”

“Eds, please, you _do_ have a high pain tolerance,” Richie says. “Tolerating pain amid, like, hysteria and rage still counts.”

“Adrenaline didn’t hurt though. God, Richie, I’ve been feeling insane.”

“So has everyone,” Richie says, sure of it. “We’ve all lost it. Bunch of basket cases. Tell me you saw Mike and Bill do that forehead thing.”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ. Thank you for bringing that up so I didn’t have to.”

“Oh, I’m a dude’s dude. I’m just a bro, bro. Let’s kill a monster and press our foreheads together like we’re in _Lord of the Rings.”_

Eddie snorts. “Well,” he says, “good for them.”

“You wanna press our foreheads together, Eddie?”

“Not in front of our friends,” Eddie says, which is a fairly lunatic response.

Richie squeezes his phone between his ear and shoulder and shifts to sit propped up against his pillow. He thinks about what Eddie had said, about being a bad sleeper, pulling all-nighters all the time. “So how’s this bed compared to your Goodwill sleeper sofa.”

“I’m not _that_ insane.”

“Sorry, sorry. West Elm.”

“You better believe it. It’s good. I mean, it’s better. No rogue springs.”

“No wife in the next room,” Richie says, because he can’t keep his fat mouth shut for one second.

Eddie’s quiet for just long enough to make Richie wonder if that was seriously off base, but then he just sighs, and says, “Nope.”

It’s dark in Richie’s room. The lamp on his bedside table works just fine, but he’s kind of enjoying this. Like hissing into a walkie talkie under the covers after lights out.

“What about you,” Eddie says. “You got someone wondering where you are right now?”

“My manager’s wondering _why_ I’m here, if that counts.”

“So no.”

“Uh,” says Richie, and laughs. “I’m not really, like, eligible bachelor of the year, Eds.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” Eddie says.

There is something seriously miswired in Richie’s brain, because that makes him feel a little warm again. He shifts his hips against the mattress. “Well, it’s for me to look at myself in the mirror every morning before I get my daily botox booster.” 

“I like how you look.”

That catches Richie in the chest. He scratches a hand up the side of his thigh, grounding. Lets out a breath. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Fuck.

“Eddie…” Richie starts to say, but Eddie cuts him off.

“Can we just—I’m fine, Rich. I’m okay with it being, being weird. If you are.”

He can work with this, he thinks. “Not the weirdest part of my weekend,” he says into the receiver. “If you can believe that.”

Eddie does that breathy laugh into the phone again. “I believe it. I, I’d believe almost anything right now. I didn’t think I’d… Well. I didn’t expect this.”

Who would? Not Richie, not in all the terrified miles between LA and Derry. He’s not sure what he would’ve done if he’d known, whether he’d have run at it or if he would’ve drawn back, cowardly. 

In either case, he’s here now. Here in Maine, in a dusty suite, listening to the sound of Eddie Kaspbrak breathing.

“Before your wife,” Richie manages. It feels wrong to invoke her, but he’d better get used to it. “Did you... did you ever?”

A long pause. “Yes.”

Richie swallows. It makes a cartoonish gulping sound in his throat. “Oh,” he says.

“Yeah, I know. Uh, not that good. I tried to forget about it. You?”

“Um.” This is embarrassing, just like everything about his life. “Yeah. A lot.”

An owl hoots outside. 

“Fuck, Richie,” Eddie says. “How’s that even work? With your, like, whole public persona thing?”

“It doesn’t, obviously.”

He feels full of static. Crackling. He can almost hear Eddie thinking over what to say.

“This guy I knew,” Eddie says. “Really tall. Big, you know. Big laugh. Glasses. I thought, maybe that was how you knew you were interested. When it felt like you knew them from somewhere else.” 

“Jesus, Eds.”

“It could’ve been us.” Eddie’s voice cracks a little. “It—it could’ve been like that.”

Richie lets his mind go there, the idea almost too bright to look at—him and Eddie, young and green, figuring it out together. Clumsy, clueless, but entirely safe. Richie never caught the name of the first guy he went home with, nineteen years old with his heart almost beating out of his chest in excitement and fear, and so desperate to impress. Everything would’ve been different. Should’ve been. 

“Richie?”

“Eds.”

“You like it?”

"It?"

"The royal it, Richie."

He laughs self-consciously. “Yeah. That’s why I do it.” 

“Tell me.”

Jesus Christ. Richie’s dick twitches between his legs.

“It's pretty scary most of the time," he says. "You never know what dude is gonna go to the tabloids. I mean, I know I'm not Princess Di, but I, uh. I’d like it better with someone. Someone I trusted.”

Eddie breathes in and out in Richie’s ear, a little bit ragged. “I want you to trust me,” he says.

It’s got to be the quality of his voice, deep, tired but alert, and so close. Richie’s dick is thickening up, rubbing stiff against the seam of his boxers. He runs his hand over his stomach, up across his chest. 

“How you doing, Richie?”

“How d’you think?”

“Me too.” God, he can hear it in Eddie’s voice now, thick and distracted. “I keep thinking—your knuckles. Your hands.”

“My hands?”

“Mm.” A little pant. “Don’t take it to heart. Broken brain. Not my fault.”

That’s about as much as Richie can take. He holds his phone in his left hand, mindful of the charger, and lets his right one drift down to cup his hard dick through the cotton.

“I was looking at your hands earlier,” Richie confesses, and laughs. Eddie too. He can hardly believe it.

Eddie hisses wordlessly. “God, Rich. I wanna touch you.”

Richie grinds his hips up against his hand. There’s a damp patch at the center of his palm, wetness spreading through the fabric.

“Touch yourself for me, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Richie pants, feeling unmoored, “yeah.”

He slips his thumbs into his waistband and pulls it down, his cock coming up to bob against his stomach. It’s aching, uncomfortably heavy, and already leaking at the tip. Richie wraps his hand around the base, just holding. His hand twitches, and the head drags a line of fluid against his belly. 

Over the phone, he hears the sound of Eddie spitting into his hand. Richie leans forward, breath coming fast, and does the same.

“I wanna know,” Eddie says, tightly, “how you like it. I could—I could get down on my knees for you.”

He can’t just keep saying stuff like that. Richie’s heart is pounding in his throat. He leans his head back against the pillows and drags his hand up the length of his dick, pulling at the delicate skin, stopping right below the head. His breath is coming hard. Eddie will be able to hear that, know how far gone Richie is. 

“Could put my mouth on your thighs. Could taste you. Take you down. I want to.”

Richie would drive himself off a fucking cliff to make that happen. Of course Eddie would be like this, always so mouthy, meeting Richie at every turn. Richie whimpers. 

“Tell me what you want, Richie.”

“Oh.” He laughs breathlessly, his face burning red. His hips rut up involuntarily into his hand. No need to fantastize about being young and dumb and vulnerable, we've got two out of three here with us tonight, ladies and gents. “Y’know. Fuck me.”

“Yeah?”

“No. Psych.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Eddie’s voice is gratifyingly shattered. “You have no idea how bad I want that.”

Richie breathes in, shuddering. “I think I got some idea.”

“On your back?”

Richie shakes his head even though Eddie can't see him. “On my front.”

“You don’t wanna see my messed up face.”

He can’t laugh at that. It’s not funny right now. “With your—your hands on my shoulders,” he says. “Hold me down. Keep me—just, right there.”

“Yeah.”

Richies balances his phone on his shoulder again. He drops his left hand to rub at his balls, and sucks the fingers of his free hand into his mouth. A stream of saliva runs out the side of his mouth and down his jaw. 

“My forehead on your back,” Eddie is saying. “Your back, Richie, Jesus, you have no idea, no idea. Get my mouth on your shoulder. Hold you at your wrists.”

Richie moves his spit-slick right hand down to his cock, cradling it in his palm. He rubs one wet finger gently against his frenulum and shudders. That’s almost too much. He twists his hand up instead, groaning as he pulls around the sensitive head. 

“Keep talking, motormouth,” he mutters. 

“Open you up with my fingers,” Eddie says. “Fuck, Richie. Is this still okay?”

He tries to laugh, but it comes out wheezing. “It’s good. Don’t stop.”

Eddie grunts, and Richie thinks, he’s right down there. One floor away, his cock in his hand, shaking apart to the idea of Richie’s body opening up for him. Eddie thinks Richie has no idea, but _Eddie_ has no idea, no clue. Richie’s so easy for him. He’d welcome him. Pull him home. 

“Push into you,” Eddie whispers harshly. “So slow. I’d go so slow, baby, I, I’d make it good.”

“I know—I know you would.” Richie strokes his head with one hand, the other down, rubbing at the sensitive tract of skin below his balls. If Eddie was doing that, Richie could use his own hands another way—put them around Eddie’s neck, grip the sheets, or grab tight to the headboard, give himself some leverage. Fuck down on Eddie’s cock. He makes a noise, a bitten off sob, and then whispers, "Sorry." 

"Don't apologize," Eddie says, his voice tight with arousal but firm, commanding. "You should be able to—I'll get you somewhere you can make all the noise you want."

"You might regret that," Richie breathes.

"No, I won't."

Richie brings his hand back up to his mouth and spits on it again sloppily. He circles his dick with his hand and rocks his hips up, grinding into it, fucking his fist. His stomach feels tight and tense, ready. 

"I gotta—"

“Yeah. Come on, Rich, come on.”

He thumbs over his head again, always so sensitive without lube, but Richie likes spit, he’s always liked it warm and messy. Eddie’s small but he’s just intensity and muscle, and he could drape over Richie, press skin close all the way up and down his body, share where they’re hot and wet, fix themselves together in secret. Richie grabs the side of his thigh with his left hand, digs his nails into the flesh, one more point of warmth and sharp clear pain, and that’s it, that’s it for him.

He gasps into the phone. A flood of warmth overtakes his brain, his neck, stomach, and then his hand as he comes in steady, gripping waves. Thrusts up hard, off the bed, a shout building in his throat, and throws his head sideways to muffle the noise in his pillow.

He lies there, face wet, chest heaving, and rubs his cheek against the pillow. “Fuck,” he mumbles.

Silence on the other side.

“Eds?”

Richie sits up. His body feels like taffy, but a little thread of anxiety shocks through him, because Eddie isn’t saying anything. He take the phone away from his ear. 

The charger is lying at Richie’s side, pulled loose by his thrashing. His phone is dead.

Richie pulls his sticky right hand away from his body, wipes it on the sheet, and lets out a shaky, incredulous laugh. Shivers there, for a minute, feeling shocked and hysterical. Then he turns on his side and plugs in his phone.

It takes what feels like a ludicrously long time to light up. Richie unlocks it to a missed call from an unsaved number, and a text: _???_

He calls Eddie back, hand shaking.

Eddie picks up immediately. “Edward Kaspbrak speaking.” 

Richie grins dopily in the dark. “Hi.”

“Appointment booking should go through the front desk.”

“I’ll go through the front desk,” Richie mumbles, not sure what he’s saying, but so happy he could pass out, because Eddie is there, talking to him, like this is fine. “I’ll run through it with my sports car.”

“I’ll have to call security.”

“Aw, don’t do that, ’s just me.”

Eddie chuckles. “You’re really gone, huh?”

“Your fault.” He spreads out across the mattress, stretching out deliciously. “I made a fuckin’ mess on this nice quilt.”

“You’re gonna get charged for that.”

“I’ll keep the bill forever.” He looks across the room at the sliver of moon, and laughs, suddenly terrified and appalled. “Fuck, Eds, my window was open that whole time.”

Eddie barks a wild, uncontained laugh. “Oh my god.”

“It’s not funny,” he says, but he laughs too, eyes wide. “You think anyone heard?”

“No,” Eddie says confidently. “No way. Everyone is out.”

 _Thank you,_ Richie thinks, not to God or the turtle this time, just to Eddie. “Did you, uh.”

“Yeah. Before you hung up.”

“Fuck, I didn’t notice!”

“So self-absorbed,” Eddie says, but it’s warm and sweet. Richie wants to curl up in his voice. 

“This gonna be okay?” he asks, because he has to.

The sticky sound of Eddie’s mouth opening. “Yeah. Richie—I don’t know what things are gonna look like for me. It might get hairy for a while.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“But I want you to know. I can’t wait. I can’t wait for this.”

With no one there to see him, Richie closes his eyes and grins hard.

“I wanna hang out,” he murmurs.

“Don’t. We’ve gotta go to sleep. You’ll wake someone up.”

“You have camp counselor personality disorder.”

“I hope none of our camp counselors ever did this,” Eddie says. Then, “You think we could see each other out our windows?”

“Maybe.” Richie opens his eyes and looks at the wooden frame. “My charger won’t reach that far.”

“So hang up. We can say goodnight right now just in case.”

Richie doesn’t want to hang up. A sweet, painful tug, to keep the line open. He reaches for his night stand and puts on his glasses. “Okay,” he says. “Sleep tight, firecracker.”

“G’night, Richie.”

He pulls his boxers back up over his hips gingerly, still sharply sensitive. The wooden floor is cool, and it creaks under his bare feet. He gets to the window and pushes it more fully open.

There’s a screen behind the glass which he hadn’t accounted for. Richie fiddles with it, trying to see if there’s a way to lift it away. He grips the metal frame of the screen and pushes upward. It makes a cracking sound, and then drops out of the frame, falling two floors and landing with a soft whump on the grass below.

Richie sticks his head out of the window and stares at the dark outline of the screen on the ground.

Downstairs and one room to the left, Eddie pokes his head out of his own window, visibly shaking with laughter. He turns his gaze up toward Richie, one side of his face illuminated by the light inside his room, and extends his arms in an exaggerated what-the-fuck gesture.

Richie gives him a big stage shrug, grinning. If he could, he’d beam a spotlight down on Eddie’s face, or throw him a rope and haul him up. What can ya do, buddy, he tries to tell Eddie with his body. This is what you’re signing up for. 

Eddie puts his chin on his fist, elbow on his windowsill, and fixes Richie with a bright, hot look. 

Richie could melt like butter down the side of the building. His brains could ooze out his ears, and leave him hanging out the window all night, a hollowed out, humming body put on earth just to stare at Eddie Kaspbrak. He’ll put himself to bed, though. Get up in the morning, take his meds, drink water, whatever. Dedicate himself to sleep hygiene. Organize his files. Take out the trash. Learn when to keep his mouth shut. Make room for someone else. 

The owl hoots again, not far off. Insects that prefer the dark and quiet make chirping noises. Tomorrow Richie will come down the stairs and see Eddie in bright daylight, the way he’s meant to be seen. He breathes out through his mouth, and sends thank yous in every direction. 

**Author's Note:**

> i was perusing the kink meme prompts going well i could write that, i could write that, and then i read this prompt and was like I Must Write That. so thank you! i hope this somewhat satisfied what you had in mind, sorry such a small portion of it is actually phone sex haha
> 
> [title!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npVqImkgV84&ab_channel=ione10)
> 
> i normally post on here as swordfishtrombones ✌️


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